


Flashback

by wheel_pen



Series: Agent and Doctor [22]
Category: The Bourne Legacy (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Spies & Secret Agents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-08
Updated: 2015-02-08
Packaged: 2018-03-11 00:38:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3309197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wheel_pen/pseuds/wheel_pen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A young man with a commendable Army career, remarkable climbing skills, and the inability to live on his own is recruited by a shadowy group of people for a super-soldier program that will make him faster, stronger, smarter—and wipe out the memories of his previous life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flashback

“Excuse me, sir?” Marcia summoned in an urgent but professional tone. The young man in question stood in the lobby of the building, staring up at the internal balconies in wonder. He was clearly out of place and she signaled to one of the guards. “Sir? In the blue jacket?” The man finally turned to look at her and she nodded and waved at him.

He walked over, a guard a few steps behind just in case. “Hi,” he said politely. “Your building is really pretty.”

“Thank you, that’s nice,” Marcia responded. “Can I help you?”

He stared at her blankly for a moment. “Oh, um, yeah.” He started searching his pockets. Marcia’s civility was put to the test as the seconds ticked by. Finally he pulled out a battered business card, grimy and bent, and held it out to her. “I was supposed to come here.”

Marcia took the card, touching it as little as possible. It carried a department name she recognized and on the back, a four-digit number written by hand. “Who are you here to see?” she inquired, reaching for her phone.

He stared at her blankly, then pointed at the card. “Like it says there.”

“This is just a department,” Marcia pointed out. “See? There’s no name on it. What person is your appointment with?”

Another dull stare. “He said I should come here.”

“Who?” Marcia asked.

“He gave me the card,” the man non-explained. Marcia could see he was getting frustrated. “And the number. The number’s really important.” He turned the card over in her hand to display the handwritten number, which didn’t help her at all.

The guard made eye contact with her over the man’s shoulder; did she want him to get rid of this spazz? Marcia shook her head. The phone number given on the card had an extension she didn’t recognize, maybe it was someone’s office.

“Okay, I’ll call and check,” she told the young man. She dialed and waited for the line to be answered. Meanwhile, the man became fascinated by a nearby water feature on the wall and wandered off to poke at it.

Finally someone picked up. “ _Hello?_ ” No name or department, just ‘Hello.’

“Hi, this is the front desk,” Marcia relayed. “I’ve got someone here who has an appointment with your office.”

The woman on the other end sounded confused, which didn’t bode well. “ _An appointment? You must be mistaken_.”

Marcia gritted her teeth slightly at the assumption but kept her voice professional. “Well, he walked in and handed me a card with this number on it,” she explained. “He said he was supposed to come here.” She glanced over to see the guard discouraging the man from splashing water on the floor. “He didn’t have a lot of details,” she understated.

Marcia thought she heard the woman conferring with someone else. Then she asked, “ _Was there a code or something written on the card?_ ”

“Yes,” Marcia confirmed. “There’s a number, it’s six-five-one-zero.”

There was a pause. “ _Okay, you can send him up. Thanks_ ,” the woman added off-hand, then hung up.

Marcia shook her head at the difficulties some people made in her life. It would have killed her to say ‘good-bye’ politely? Then she waved the young man, or rather the guard minding him, back over. “You’re to go up to this room,” she told him, handing him the card back. “See the room number here? Twenty-three-oh-six, suite E. That’s on the twenty-third floor. There’s the elevator.” She saw the exact moment when the information was too much, too soon and she lost him. “Terrance, maybe you could take him up?” she suggested to the guard hopefully.

“Sure, Marcia, no problem,” Terrance agreed. She definitely owed him a donut.

“Thank you very much for helping me,” the young man said to Marcia sincerely, and she had to smile a little.

“Over here to the elevators,” Terrance directed patiently.

The receptionist in room 2306 raised an eyebrow when the guard delivered their visitor, and Terrance shrugged at her. “Show her the card, buddy,” he encouraged.

He held it out to her. “The number’s very important,” he repeated to her.

“Thanks,” the secretary replied, not touching the dingy card. “Suite E is right here.”

“Good-bye,” the young man told Terrance. “Thank you for coming with me.”

“No problem, buddy,” Terrance assured him. “You take care now.”

The secretary knocked on the door marked E, then opened it. Three people in suits looked up from the files they had laid out on a table, and the young man froze before their stares.

“Come in, thanks,” said Mr. N, and the man hesitantly entered. “Sit down.” He sat. “Can I see that card, please?” The door clicked shut behind them and the young man glanced back over his shoulder nervously. “The card, please?” Mr. N prompted pointedly. It did indeed appear to be from their office, and the man before him matched the picture of the man in the file marked 6510. “You were supposed to be here yesterday,” Mr. N reminded him, with some irritation.

6510 bobbed his head. “Yeah. Yes, sir. I got lost.”

Mr. N blinked at him in disbelief. “What? Seriously?”

“Yeah, with all the… buildings and the… streets?” 6510 tried to explain inarticulately. “And the buildings. Sir.”

Dr. M heaved an impatient sigh. And that was what really tipped the balance for N, because irritating her put a little spring in his step. “Okay.” He glanced at the file again. “You were recruited in Reno, correct?”

“Reno, yeah. Yes, sir,” 6510 agreed, eagerly seizing on the familiar name.

“What’s the Berwin Place?” asked Dr. D, on N’s other side. “Was that your apartment building?”

“That’s where I lived, sir,” 6510 nodded. “In Reno.” There was a long pause. “It’s military.”

This sent them all diving back into the files, which they hadn’t expected to be looking at today. M found the information first. “It’s a halfway house for veterans,” she revealed, unimpressed.

6510 could hear the disapproval in her tone and bit his lip. “I was in the Army, ma’am,” he asserted.

“Yes, you were,” N agreed, scanning the service record. “Wow, you were in Kuwait, huh?”

6510 stared at him for a long moment. “Is this a test?” he finally asked.

“J---s,” M muttered, and the visitor’s eyes slid over to her.

D motioned to N and discreetly pointed out something in the military record. M peered over intrusively to see what they were looking at, then gave another disgusted curse. Apparently, investigation had revealed that the visitor’s initial Army recruiter, in an attempt to fulfill his quota, had added twelve points to the young man’s IQ… to make it meet the minimum requirements.

“Did I do something wrong?” the young man asked worriedly.

“No, not at all,” N insisted. “You actually, uh—“ His eye seized on something else. “You actually received a commendation for valor,” he noted in surprise, glancing pointedly at M. They didn’t pick these people off the street, after all. “Tell us about that.”

6510 made a visible effort to think back. “I wore my dress uniform,” he recalled, “and I stood in line, and people clapped, and we had cookies.”

N carefully did not make eye contact with his two colleagues. “Okay. And what did you _do_ to receive the commendation? Why did they give it to you?”

“Oh, um, there were some people trapped, in a building, and… I got them out.” He relayed this in a very casual manner which belied the details of the account N was reading about.

“You climbed up to a tenth-story window,” D summarized aloud for them, “and you broke in and led them to the roof where the helicopter was waiting. Oh, the building was on _fire_ ,” he added, catching that part.

“You climbed up the outside of a ten-story building, which was on fire,” N checked. The young man nodded. “Why? What made you do that?”

“Well, the lieutenant said,” 6510 replied. “He said they had to get to the roof but the ladder was too slow—people going up the ladder, they were too slow—so I got up faster. I’m good at climbing,” he added, with a certain amount of pride.

Ability to follow orders, to see another way to accomplish the goal, to put himself in harm’s way for others, plus an innate physical talent—N was beginning to see some useful attributes here. Not everyone felt the same, though.

“Come on, sir, this is a waste of time,” M decided, tossing the file down in front of her. “Did you look at his history since discharge? He’s in a halfway house because he can’t live on his own. Did you see the test scores? He can barely read. He’s like—Forrest Gump,” she finished impatiently, having ignored all of her colleagues’ cues to shut up.

“Well, but if you look at—“ D began.

“I’m not dumb,” 6510 interrupted, giving M an angry look. His muscles were tense and his breath came quicker, and N began to get a little nervous. “I’m good at stuff.” His eyes darted between the three of them suspiciously.

“Well, of course,” N placated, not so much to make him feel better as to try and reduce his hostility level. “Of course you’re—“

But his tone was slightly too obvious, and the young man had heard it too often before. He stood abruptly and the other three froze. Then he shucked off his jacket and started unbuttoning his shirt.

“What are you doing?” N questioned carefully.

“I’m gonna show you what I’m good at,” 6510 declared, kicking off his shoes.

“That’s not really—“ He hopped up onto the tabletop, straight from the floor. “Okay, that was kind of—“ N started to compliment. But that wasn’t the trick, apparently. The young man straightened up and poked at one of the ceiling tiles, pushing it up and out of the way. Then he grabbed the ceiling framework and started to haul himself up into the ceiling crawlspace.

N and the others moved away from the table quickly. “You can’t possibly fit through there,” N predicted, right before he somehow did. “Is there even room for a person to move around up there?” he asked, as if the others would know. Maybe not, because he didn’t hear any noise from the ceiling once 6510 had vanished from view.

“Is he _stuck_?” M guessed, her low opinion of the stunt clear.

“Hey, kid, are you okay?” N called upwards.

“Over here,” said a muffled voice from the ceiling in the far corner of the room. Another tile was pushed aside and 6510 stuck his head out of it, upside-down.

“Wow, that was very stealthy,” N praised, because it was. Although he didn’t really have a baseline for how much noise crawling through the ceiling would make.

“Yeah, I can be really quiet,” 6510 agreed. He pulled back into the ceiling and again there was silence.

N expected him to pop back out of his original hole, but nothing happened. “Kid?” he finally asked.

There was a scream from next door and the three of them looked at each other. “The ladies’ room is next door,” M noted, and then they all dashed out of the office.

A woman fled the ladies’ room in a panic and N barged right in with the other two behind him. Sure enough there was a ceiling tile displaced near the shared wall between the two rooms. “He must’ve overshot,” D suggested.

“Hey, are you up there?” N called. “Can you hear me?” The young man hesitantly stuck his head out the hole. “Come on down now, it’s okay.”

“I’m sorry,” he said in a small voice, not moving.

“No, it’s okay, come on down,” N repeated. Suddenly a security guard burst into the bathroom, but N waved him off. “It’s okay, we’re fine,” he insisted, and since the guard knew who he was, he took his word for it and left. “Come on,” he repeated once more towards the ceiling, a bit more forcefully.

“Okay,” 6510 agreed. N wished they had a camera on him, because he couldn’t quite figure out how he got through the small hole—he sort of rolled himself up until he fit, then unrolled himself, elegantly, while hanging from the ceiling strut. Then he dropped smoothly to the floor.

N made eye contact with both D and M. “That’s very impressive,” he judged sincerely. “You were an acrobat in the circus, weren’t you?” That had kind of jumped out from his file.

6510 gave an odd little twitch, as though the reminder spurred a physical response. “Yes,” he finally answered stiffly.

“Let’s go back to the conference room,” N suggested, gesturing for the young man—now filthy from climbing in the ceiling—to go first. “Why did you leave the circus?” he asked curiously.

“I was too old.” The remark was said tensely, wrapped in old anger, and N decided to drop the subject for now.

They sat back down and 6510 busied himself putting his shirt and shoes back on. “So, did the person who gave you this card tell you about the program we’re running?” N inquired.

“He said it was like the military,” the young man replied readily. “Lots of running and climbing. And helping people. I like to help people.”

“Well, it’s very physical,” N warned. “There’s a lot you have to learn. Some things might be very difficult.” 6510 nodded. “And then the real job, after all the training—it’s dangerous.”

6510 did not seem fazed by this. “But I can live someplace, and do work and have clothes and food?” he checked.

“Absolutely,” N promised.

“Even oranges?” the young man asked hopefully. “Oranges are my favorite.”

“I think we can swing oranges,” N agreed. He produced a small stack of papers and handed it to 6510. “This is the agreement,” he explained. “Why don’t you step out in the hall and look that over for a few minutes?”

6510 took the papers and glanced over the tiny print anxiously. M snorted softly, knowing this was a lost cause. “You want me to read this?” he checked.

“Well, give it a try,” N encouraged. “There won’t be a test later.”

He seemed relieved. “Oh. Okay.”

“Right outside,” N reminded him as he stood. “Shut the door.”

There was a moment of silence in the conference room. D discreetly swept an errant dust bunny from the ceiling off the top of the table. “Forrest Gump,” M repeated, though she seemed more resigned to him.

“Hey, Forrest Gump could run,” N pointed out cheekily. “This guy climbs. And does acrobatics.”

“Intelligence level isn’t really a problem anyway,” D reminded them. “We’ll be enhancing that in all the trainees.”

“This guy’ll need a double dose,” M predicted dryly.

“He has a good attitude, though,” N noted. “He’s polite. Embraces a challenge. Follows orders.”

“Eats healthy,” added D with a smirk.

“He’s a day behind the others, and he was already gonna be playing catch-up,” M warned. “And we can’t exactly tell him to just report to the camp on his own.”

“That’s true,” N agreed. “Well, we’ll take him up ourselves tomorrow. Like you said, he already had an uphill climb, another day won’t make much difference.” He glanced between the two of them. “Any last-minute objections?”

“I’m not sure he can really give informed consent,” D noted. The other two blinked at him as if saying, ‘Your point is?’ D shrugged it off. “Just a thought.”

N snapped the folder closed definitively. “Okay, let’s get the signature and alias and wrap him up,” he decided. He stood and opened the door, then looked up and down the corridor. “Well, s—t,” he sighed.

“So much for follows orders,” M remarked smartly.

“Check the men’s room,” he directed D in irritation. “You wait here in case he comes back.” He picked a direction and stalked in it, arriving at the reception area.

Where he saw their errant new recruit sitting on the edge of a secretary’s desk, happily chatting with her. N cleared his throat and 6510 looked up, _not_ guiltily. “I tried to read it, sir,” he said, indicating the papers he still clutched, “but there were too many words I didn’t know. And I wanted to tell Gladys I was sorry.”

“He is such a cutie,” Gladys the secretary judged maternally. “Have another orange slice.” She shook a bowl of orange jelly candy at him.

“Thank you.”

“What did you do to Gladys?” N wanted to know, mystified.

“Scared me half to death in the ladies’ room a few minutes ago,” Gladys supplied cheerfully. “But that’s alright, don’t you feel bad about it.”

“Okay,” he agreed. “Thank you, Gladys.”

N added this to his store of knowledge about the young man, deciding it generally went in the positive category. “Okay, well, come back to the conference room, we have a couple more things to discuss,” he said.

“Oh, okay,” 6510 agreed readily. “Good-bye, Gladys.”

“Good-bye, sweetie.”

They headed back down the hall. “Oh, you found him,” D realized, coming from the other direction. “Where was he?”

“I was talking to Gladys,” 6510 answered, which didn’t help at all.

M looked slightly disappointed that they’d found him when they reentered the room. “Okay, just a couple more things,” N insisted, trying to keep them on track. “Are you ready to sign the agreement and join the program?” he asked seriously.

“Yes, sir,” the young man replied, with equal gravity.

“Okay.” N handed him a pen. “Sign your name on the last page. At the bottom. On the line.” Then he pointed, just to be clear.

Slowly, laboriously, 6510 signed his name. M took the contract when he was done and not-very-discreetly made sure he’d spelled it right.

“Next, you need a new name,” N declared, hoping he didn’t have to explain this too much. “You’re not going to use your old name anymore. You’re going to forget about it. Like you’re going to forget about your old life.”

The young man nodded, thoughtfully, and N felt that for once, he really _did_ understand.

N pulled a list from his pocket. “Okay, your last name is Green,” he decided, looking over the options. After he said it, and M made a little noise, he told himself it had absolutely nothing to do with Forrest Gump. Consciously, anyway. “We usually let people pick their first name,” he explained. “Not any part of your real name, though. And try to keep it simple. And, nothing on this list,” he added, pushing the list of names already chosen across the table.

Green’s eyes had glazed over halfway through and he struggled to make sense of the directions. “Um… Jim?”

N looked at him steadily. “No.”

“Ken?”

“No. Nothing on the list,” he repeated. “Pick something _not_ on the list.”

“Steve?”

N couldn’t help sighing—it had been a long day, with an unexpected addition. “What about a pet?” D suggested, trying to be helpful. “Did you ever have a pet, or maybe a neighbor’s pet—“

“There was a white tiger in the circus named Snowflake,” Green shared. Then he grinned. “But, I don’t think I should be named Snowflake.”

N smiled back, trying not to smirk. “No, I agree. No Snowflake.”

Green thought harder. It was a noticeable process. “Someone had a dog once, named Jeremy. It was a nice dog.”

“Jeremy’s good, let’s go with Jeremy,” N decided quickly.

“It’s kind of long,” M noted, just to be difficult.

This was ignored. “Jeremy Green,” N proclaimed. “Say it back.”

“Jeremy Green,” he repeated, haltingly.

“Try writing it down,” N suggested, handing him a pen and a blank piece of paper as he annotated his own file.

He tried, carefully. “What was the last one again?” he asked.

“Green. Like the color.”

He showed N his handiwork and the other man corrected his spelling of both parts. “Try it again,” he encouraged. “Keep practicing saying and writing it.”

“Jeremy Green, Jeremy Green, Jeremy Green,” he muttered studiously to himself. M rolled her eyes.

“Say, Jeremy,” N tried in a casual tone. The young man did not look up. “Jeremy.” N knocked on the table in front of him. “That’s you, remember? You have to get used to it.”

“Oh, right.”

“Where are you staying, Jeremy?” This resulted in a blank look. “What hotel are you staying at here?”

“Um, nowhere,” Jeremy admitted.

N blinked. “When did you get to town?”

“Yesterday, on the train,” Jeremy replied. “But then I got lost.”

“Where did you stay last night?” N pressed.

“There was this—spot, down some stairs, where it was warm—“ he tried to explain.

“You slept on the street last night?” N clarified, not sure if astonishment or horror was what he was trying to mask.

“Yes, sir. I got lost.”

“Okay, well, we’re going to put you up at a hotel tonight,” N decided. Obviously he couldn’t let this guy stray too far. “And then tomorrow we’ll take you to the training camp. Okay, Jeremy?”

The young man grinned. “Okay, sir.”

**

The car kicked up a cloud of dust on the dirt track, which really wasn’t meant to be driven on. The tall, dark-skinned man watched it approach with a narrow gaze, then turned his attention back to the people before him on the field, sparring, shooting arrows, running sprints back and forth across the grass. His endurance joggers should be coming up to the car in just a few minutes—if they were feeling literal today, they would climb right over it.

The car door opened and N stepped out, his dark business suit in sharp contrast to all the grey sweatsuits around him. He was sensible enough to look around carefully before stepping onto the grass, in case a person or object was about to come flying by.

“Dennis,” he called, a note of false friendliness in his tone. “You’re a hard man to get a hold of.”

“Grass is wet,” Dennis responded gruffly. “Might ruin your shoes.”

N risked it and walked over to him. He watched the trainees idly for a moment. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you about last week’s evaluations,” he finally said, though he knew Dennis was well aware of this.

Dennis began to stride purposefully across the grass. “I thought they were pretty clear,” he remarked. “White! Left arm higher. Don’t let it sag.” He readjusted the young woman’s position. “You tell me you’re getting tired, you’re gonna do thirty more rounds,” he threatened. With a determined look in her eyes she gritted her teeth and went back to work.

“You canned three middle-of-the-pack recruits,” N went on, following him resolutely. “Which meant you kept three who hit rock bottom on every test. I’d like an explanation for that.”

“Your three middle-of-the-pack recruits will go on to other useful things,” Dennis predicted instead. “Other programs, other units.”

“I’m not really worried about them,” N conceded. “But I want to know why you’re keeping recruits like—“ He glanced across the field, searching for an example. “—like Green around,” he specified, seeing the young man fixedly jumping rope nearby.

“He’s not rock bottom on _everything_ ,” Dennis corrected, though the praise was faint. He pulled a stopwatch from his pocket. “Green!” he shouted. “Up a tree! Now!” He clicked the timer. The young man immediately dropped the rope and scrambled, squirrel-like, up the nearest tree to the very top branches.

“Oh, good, he’s finally learned his name,” N noted dryly.

“Back down!” Dennis ordered, and Green dropped precipitously, catching himself on a low branch and landing lightly on the ground. Dennis stopped the timer. “New record,” he pointed out to N. “Back to jumping rope!” he added to Green.

“Yeah, we all know he climbs trees like a monkey,” N agreed dismissively. “Points for agility. But overall strength, speed, endurance, health—and don’t even get me started on intelligence,” N countered. “He just doesn’t measure up.”

“I thought you liked Green,” Dennis shrugged. “You’re the one who insisted he be let in the program late.”

N was not embarrassed by this. “He had potential. Considerable potential,” he judged. “Which has not panned out. He’s still the runt of the litter.”

“Everybody loves an underdog,” Dennis claimed philosophically.

“That’s not really a good administrative policy,” N pointed out.

“Did you know—probably not—kid’s a h—l of a singer?” Dennis commented.

“What does that have to do with anything?” N sighed.

“Green’s scrappy. He’s got heart,” Dennis judged firmly.

N narrowly avoided treading into a sand pit. “We’re not looking for Captain America, you know,” he couldn’t resist saying.

Dennis shook his head. “This isn’t the first program I’ve been through,” he began, and N rolled his eyes behind his back, having heard this opener before. “Every ten or fifteen years, some new super-soldier formula comes along—drugs, psychology, genetics. The methods change, the goal doesn’t.”

“Please, tell me what my goal is,” N cut in, the sarcasm exacerbated by their casual proximity to the firing range.

“Your goal, everyone’s goal,” Dennis continued anyway, “is to stamp out super-soldiers on an assembly line, every one equal in every ability, all equipped with the same tools.”

“Blame Henry Ford.”

Dennis ignored this. “That’s always the goal, and that’s always why these programs eventually crumble. Because that goal is just not sustainable. Bates!” he shouted towards a pair of grappling agents. “Pull your punches, you’re just sparring.”

“So what _should_ my goal be?” N pressed, partly humoring him but also partly curious. Dennis _had_ been around a long time, and no one was going to accuse N of being too proud to take advice.

“Agents should be individually handcrafted,” Dennis opined, “with training and mission specialization.”

“Are they organic and free-range, too?” N quipped.

At this, Dennis unexpectedly laughed. “They are, kinda. But look at these two.” A large, Viking-esque blond man and a curvaceous brunette were doing pull-ups on a bar nearby. “Lund and Thomas. Don’t tell me you recruited them thinking you could make their abilities and talents exactly equal.”

“Well, Lund’s the top dog,” N remembered. “It would be nice to have a dozen of him, but I guess that would be unrealistic.”

Dennis rolled his eyes. “That’s not what I meant. Lund is a bruiser, a breaker. Great shot, too. You need someone killed, you send him, he’ll get it done.”

N nodded with satisfaction. “Not Thomas, though?”

“Thomas!” Dennis called. “Enough. Report to Studio Five.” The woman jumped down and began walking away while the blond man continued his exercise.

“What’s Studio Five?” N had to ask.

“Dance lessons,” Dennis explained. “You think that Nordic meathead can go undercover and seduce information out of someone? Not a chance. But that could be Thomas’s bread and butter.”

“Why Dennis,” N commented archly, “are you being sexist?”

Dennis snorted. “Talents. Abilities. Perceptions,” he countered. “Individualized. Bates back there? She’s a little mole rat. She can get in anywhere without being seen. Great for certain thefts or planting surveillance. Can she shoot someone from a rooftop? Sure,” he went on. “But not as well as Lund. Can Lund squeeze into a storm drain? No. Doll up both Bates and Thomas and put them at the same party, who’s gonna make the mark drool secrets all over his tux? Thomas.”

N grimaced at the mental picture. “I see your point,” he allowed cautiously, “though I’m not sure how applicable it really is. And their abilities might change drastically as the next phase of the modification kicks in.”

Dennis shrugged. “Sure, maybe. That’s what I’m here for—to change the training midstream if necessary. Otherwise all you’d need is a hamster wheel and a Richard Simmons tape.”

They’d come back around to the beginning, where they’d met, and N was momentarily distracted by a trail of footprints going over his car. “Green!” Dennis called sharply. “No archery right now. Life some weights.”

“Why no archery?” N asked, just to make him say it. “His scores indicate he could use the practice.”

Dennis gave him a sideways glance. “It’s better if he practices with no one else around,” he admitted. “Until he starts actually hitting the target consistently.”

“So what’s he good for?” N wanted to know. “What’s his specialty?”

Dennis paused for a long moment before answering. “I feel like he’s gonna be good at several things,” he answered vaguely.

“Such as?” N pressed, unconvinced.

“Live retrieval,” Dennis decided. “Protection details. Deep cover work.”

“Deep cover?” N scoffed. “He barely knows his _own_ name.”

“He has empathy.”

“That’s not really good.”

“He compartmentalizes the empathy,” Dennis clarified. “He turns it on and he really believes it. Then he turns it off and punches you in the face.” N could see how that might be useful. “And he puts the asset before himself. That’s tough to teach. It almost has to be instinct, because otherwise you’re fighting the instinct to survive and to h—l with the mission.”

They both watched Green try to remember how the weight machine worked, poking the wrong thing and sending the weights crashing to the ground. “He is not playing with a full deck, though,” N noted.

“West!” Dennis ordered. “Help him out. He’ll appreciate the brains all the more when he gets them,” he predicted.

N hoped so. “Alright,” he agreed. “We’ll play it your way. At least until we see how Phase 2 is working,” he qualified.

Dennis seemed satisfied. “That’s all I ask.”

**

N stormed into the clinic, surprising the nurse who was redressing a wound on Green’s arm. “Why is he not locked up in restraints?” he demanded of Dennis, who followed him. Green’s eyes widened in alarm.

“Oh, he’s fine,” Dennis dismissed. “He saved Lund’s life, you know.” His pride in this achievement was obvious, and Green straightened up a little in response.

“Did I read the report wrong?” N sputtered, knowing he hadn’t. “Didn’t he start a fight that put a fellow trainee in the ICU?”

Dennis waved this off. “Lund will be fine. He’s already out of intensive care.” The initial incident had been all of two days ago, after all.

“Oh, well, as long as he won’t be _permanently_ injured,” N replied sarcastically.

“Karl said I was dumb,” Green revealed, his tone slightly defensive. N turned on him, clearly not expecting him to speak. “But I’m not, I’m smarter now.”

“Right, you’ve reached the level of an eleven-year-old who hits people for calling him dumb,” N responded intemperately.

“Well, I wasn’t that smart before,” Green shrugged philosophically. N pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration. “And I didn’t think I could hit him so hard,” he went on. “I’m not used to that.” He looked down at his fingers and flexed them as if he’d never seen them before.

“But the _point_ is,” Dennis redirected, “once he realized what was happening, he _stopped_ fighting, performed first aid on Lund, and even built a makeshift sledge and brought him to the clinic.”

“Want to see my sledge?” Green asked eagerly, hopping down from the exam table.

“No,” N denied, with indignation.

“Oh.”

“It’s a good sledge,” Dennis assured him.

“Yeah,” Green agreed, nodding with satisfaction.

N stepped away from Green, towards Dennis, and lowered his voice. “You _know_ the Chairman is inspecting the recruits next week,” he hissed. “They have to be absolutely _perfect_. Will Lund even be on his feet by then?”

This, Dennis could not guarantee. “Lund may have to sit the inspection out,” he admitted.

This was not what N wanted to hear. “He was our best man!”

“Maybe not,” Dennis countered cryptically.

N followed his gaze over to Green, who was laughing with the nurse as she checked his stitches. His surprise was evident. “You really think— _he_ is going to be the top agent?” he asked in disbelief.

“There’s no ‘top agent,’” Dennis corrected, for starters. “People excel in different areas. And Green’s come a long way since the program began. His scores are up across the board. And he has a lot of leadership capability.”

“Leadership?” N repeated, eyebrows raised. He’d been busy with other projects lately and hadn’t been reading the trainee evaluations as closely as he, apparently, should have. “When did _he_ become a leader?”

“He shows initiative,” Dennis explained. “And the others follow his orders.”

N glanced back at the man warily. “Is that good? I can think of many situations where that’s _not_ good.”

“People like him,” Dennis shrugged. “And now that Phase 2 is underway and his abilities have improved, he’s less frustrated. He can do more to help people.”

“I like helping people,” Green confirmed. “Am I helping you, Amy?” he asked the nurse with a smile.

“No, you’re just getting in my way,” the nurse countered with a playful, even flirtatious, grin.

N narrowed his eyes at her. “Some people like him _too_ much, apparently,” he commented, loudly enough for Amy to hear. She looked appropriately chagrined—they did _not_ need the recruits getting mixed up with love and attraction. Those tended to scramble the minds of even _normal_ people.

N turned back to Dennis. “You really don’t think there’s a problem?” he checked. “With Green? Between Green and Lund?”

“Ask him yourself,” Dennis suggested, which was about the last thing N wanted to do.

Green stared at him alertly, like a prairie dog. “Green, do you have a problem with Lund?” he asked.

“Well,” Green replied slowly, “I think Karl’s mean. And he shouldn’t call me dumb,” he added fiercely. “But I didn’t mean to hurt him so bad. I’ll be more careful next time.”

“Could you maybe not get into fistfights over insults?” N suggested dryly.

“I can’t promise anything,” Green told him honestly.

“Phase 3 involves a lot of behavioral modification,” Dennis reminded N quickly. “That should suppress their emotional responses.”

“It _should_ ,” N agreed, his tone threatening that something unpleasant would happen if it didn’t. “I will be here again on _Monday_ ,” he warned Dennis, “to make sure everything is set up for the Chairman’s visit. And they’d better not disappoint.”

“Don’t see how they could,” Dennis muttered as N strode out the door.

**

N did not flinch away from the images on the video. He always knew this was going to be the most difficult, and crucial, part of the program. The recruits had been given tools of great power and taught how to use them; now their superiors needed to know _they_ were really in control of those tools, that the trainees’ power was theirs to unleash on command. No one wanted to risk these weapons falling into the wrong hands, or going rogue on their own. To the untrained eye it seemed a blunt-force approach; but N was one of the few who understood the delicate intricacies of it, the subtlety that allowed them to retain control without actually damaging the properties they’d so carefully created—handcrafted, as Dennis liked to say.

“Fairly typical stuff,” M shrugged, fast-forwarding through the video. “We did have to go a few extra rounds with some of the agents, though, to complete the wipe. The memories were persistent.”

“Like who?” N asked.

“Green was the worst,” M advised, and N was not surprised. “I think we’ve eradicated all conscious memory, but he still gets a twitch with certain keywords. I’ve put a note in his file about not mentioning clowns or the circus to him.”

“Well that kinda thing’s gonna make a mark on a kid,” N deadpanned.

“They should all be clean, though,” she judged with satisfaction. “No memory of their life before they joined the program, and no worry about why that is. They won’t be questioners.”

“Good,” N agreed. “And no adverse reactions or diminished capacity?” Her hesitation caught his attention. “What?”

“Dennis feels they’re not as emotional as before,” M revealed.

“Well yeah, that’s the point.”

She shrugged. “I don’t know, maybe it just wasn’t what he was expecting,” she warned. “He says they never laugh, or even smile, now unless they’re in character for an undercover job.”

“Laughing and smiling are not required,” N noted. “I trust they don’t yell in anger, or cry either?”

“Not that he’s mentioned,” M agreed.

“Well then, I’d say we were successful,” N concluded.

“Yes, I guess so.”


End file.
